Human Experiences, Proximity, Augmented Reality and the Internet of Things

iBeacon is the Football of Technology

Apple may be the Brazil of technology companies and England might be Microsoft, but Time Magazine has missed the bigger story: that football itself is the iBeacon of sports.

Now, I’m a once-every-four-years fan of football. But when I do, I find watching it is hypnotic (whereas golf, say, just makes me sleepy).

I was chatting with someone the other night and told them that if beacons were a sport, they would surely be football. Here’s why:

There’s a seductive quality to the game which matches the ability of beacons to deliver multiple messages at different distances. There’s the long set-ups, push messages…and then there’s the interaction that happens at closer contact

The game is both precise and loose – mirroring a beacon’s ability to deliver precisely targeted messages based on proximity, while not being precise enough to do true wayfinding.

There can be signal interference.

When done right, there can be moments of elegance and discovery, even art. When done poorly, it’s like having a push message bite your shoulder.

If iBeacon and BLE is the football of technology then….

Hockey is NFC – all contact

American football is geofencing – it’s all about the zones

Oh, and Objective-C is like cricket: the rules are obscure, it takes you forever to figure out, and it can take all day to know whether you’ve been playing with the right class.